PARAMUS — Ahmad Mammous said he’s lucky to be alive after coming face to face with a gunman inside Garden State Plaza mall Monday night.

Mammous, who was managing a crew working on the floor inside the Foot Action store, said he heard a popping sound not long after 9 p.m. and knew right away it was gunfire.

“I hear three shots, one next to the other, one next to the other,” he told reporters early this morning, standing in the frigid November air outside the Bergen County mall. “And I open the front door to the store and I saw the security guards — all the security guards in the mall — they start screaming at the people, ‘get out, everybody out, everybody out.”

Mammous said he told his crew of four to head for the back of the store, collect their supplies from the service hallway and get out. That’s when he said he saw the gunman.

The man, who came from the mall and into the service hallway, was dressed head to toe in black leather, was wearing a black motorcycle helmet and was carrying a “machine gun,” Mammous said. He came within feet of the work crew.